PETER CAVE: The federal opposition maintains that the government
had to have approved the police investigation and the scope of it. Labor
has complained to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Neil
Andrew, and to the Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Palmer, that Saturday’s
raid on the home of an adviser breached parliamentary privilege.

FIONA REYNOLDS: Mr Brereton, you have accused the government
of harassment and intimidation but what evidence do you have that ministers
had a direct involvement in the police action and knew about the raids?

LAURIE BRERETON: It would be absolutely unprecedented for
this to occur without the government knowing. It was the government
who initiated the inquiry, and it was Mr Downer himself who bragged
about how the government was getting close to the leakers. Late last
year he said this: he said, ‘I think we are pretty much tracking down
where the material is coming from now.’ So it is no good him denying
that he and his colleagues do not have their fingerprints all over the
outrageous events of last Saturday morning; it is the action of an arrogant
Howard government.

FIONA REYNOLDS: If someone did leak up to 79 secret and top
secret documents, shouldn’t they be caught?

LAURIE BRERETON: It would be a matter of concern. It would
be a matter of concern but the fact is not one of these documents was
found or in any way identified in the search that occurred in my staffer’s
home last Saturday, and that is why this is such an abuse of process.
Because rather than the documents, what was turned up were my parliamentary
records, my draft parliamentary questions, my draft shadow Cabinet minutes,
my working papers, draft press releases and the like. This infringes
directly, not on national security, but on my rights to do my job that
are guaranteed by act of parliament.

FIONA REYNOLDS: You say that none of these documents were
found in the home of your adviser, Philip Dorling, but did he receive
any of the leaked documents?

LAURIE BRERETON: Look, let me make this very clear—we have
a great respect for national security and it is tremendously important
that the lives of Australian servicemen and women are never placed at
risk as a result of leaked documents. But the reality is here—there
was no such thing in place. What was on the line here is embarrassment
to the government; a government that saw it revealed, through the leaking
of these documents and their appearance in the paper, that they knew
a great deal of the orchestration of the militia in East Timor by the
Indonesian military, in the lead-up to last year’s ballot, at the
very same time that Alexander Downer and his colleagues were denying
it and saying that it was just the work of rogue elements. It is embarrassment
that is on the line here not national security.

FIONA REYNOLDS: Did Dr Dorling receive any of these leaked
documents?

LAURIE BRERETON: ...Dorling is in receipt of no such document,
and no such document was found in this outrageous exercise of the search
warrant last Saturday.